With your help we can educate the public about the dangers of unhealthy eating and hopefully save some lives.

Either way, thanks for reading and keep posting your excellent information on johnonwine.com.

Hope you a good week.

Warmest Regards

Yours Truly Felicia

I went to Felicia’s site, loved the recipes, and invited her to send me something to post. Felicia is my first guest writer, and she provided a wonderful recipe/guest article:

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If You Don’t Make these Healthy Mediterranean Recipes Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

Greek Crostini

Greek Crostini

Ingredients

1000 grams of bread

200 grams of Greek Kalamata Olives

100 grams of Greek Feta Cheese

8 tablespoons of Olive Oil

1 clove Garlic

Salt and Pepper

This recipe is perfect for 8 persons and you can prepare it in 35 minutes. It is a very flavorful and sumptuous dish inspired by the Greek feta croutons and black olives. This is also one of the easiest recipes to prepare.

Preparation

Make 1.5-inch thick slices of bread. Place the sliced bread in the oven or toaster. Rub garlic on each slice of bread after toasting.

Meanwhile, cut the feta cheese into small cubes. Cut the olives into quarters or halves. In a separate mixing bowl, mix the cubed feta cheese and olives and season with olive oil. Make sure the toasted breads are still hot before sprinkling the cheese and olive mixture. Serve and Enjoy.

Okay, I did some math and tried this recipe out. 1,000 grams, a kilo, is roughly 2.2 pounds. I used two loaves, each was a pound – close enough, of Franco American Bakery sourdough from Santa Rosa, CA, it is the best bread available throughout Northern California. 200 grams of olives is about a cup, 100 grams of feta cheese is about 1/2 cup, so that’s what I used.,,and I added more garlic, but that’s me.

I paired this easy, fun, informal food delight, loaded with lots of delicious flavor, with an unusual wine I recently purchased when I visited the J. Lohr tasting room in downtown San Jose., the 2009 J. Lohr Wildflower Valdiguié, Montery County, a lighter, completely unpretentious red wine with low tannins and lots of forward juicy fruit notes. Made using some carbonic maceration, this wine reminds me of Beaujolais Nouveau and of Preston Vineyard’s past Faux, light, fruity, a red wine that makes you think of blush wines and Sangria. Berry, Cherry, Cran, spice, a little herb, a lot of fun. Only $10 a bottle, or $7.50 for wine club members.

J. Lohr’s Winery and Tasting Room, located right in the middle of San Jose.

Inspired by the tastiness of Felicia’s Greek Crostini recipe, I tried another of her recipes from her website last night, Authentic Italian-style Gourmet Mushroom Risotto.

This recipe requires 20 minutes preparation time and 30 minutes cooking time. The dish should be ready in 50 minutes. This will make 6 servings. Each serving has the following nutritional value: Calories 438, Total fat 17.1g, Cholesterol 31mg, Sodium 1338mg, Total carbs 56.9g, Dietary fiber 2.7g, and Protein 11.9g.

2. In a large saucepan, heat 2 tbsp of olive oil over medium fire. Add the mushrooms and stir. Cook the mushroom for 3 minutes or until tender. Then remove the mushrooms including the liquid. Set it aside.

3. In a frying pan, add one tablespoon of olive oil. Stir the shallots and cook for at least 1 minute. Add the Arborio rice and stir continuously for about 2 minutes to coat with oil. Pour the wine when the rice changed its color to pale gold. Stir continuously until the wine has been fully absorbed by the rice. Then add half a cup of broth to the rice and stir continuously until the broth is absorbed. Continue introducing half a cup of broth while stirring the rice. Make sure the liquid is well absorbed.

4. Remove the rice from the heat and add mushrooms with liquid, Parmesan, Butter and chives. Stir continuously then season with salt and pepper. Serve hot.

I wrote on facebook about how delicious this dish was, and 6 people “liked” my new status, and somewhere in a string of 23 comments, Parducci Wine Cellars asked me to guest chef for their next tweetup, for Chardonnay, on May 6.

Earlier today, I visited with Parducci’s Retail Sales Manager/Social Media Marketer Cindy Molchany; I brought some leftover mushroom risotto and she poured the 2008 Parducci Mendocino County Chardonnay and the 2008 Paul Dolan Vineyards Mendocino County Chardonnay. We talked about the menu I would like to cook to pair with these wines, and she sent me home with three bottles of each to play with as I experiment and fine tune recipes.

Delicious Risotto and Wine. Cesano and Parducci. May 6, 2010, 5-7pm

I plan on adding finely diced tart apple to the risotto, with the shallots, and expect they will sweeten and exude sugars as they cook for nearly 30 minutes. The apples in the new Apple-Mushroom Italian Risotto, along with the Saffron, inspired by Felicia’s original recipe, but made my own, will pair beautifully with the two fruit forward Mendocino County Chardonnays.

I will also make apple pies from scratch. Since apple pie needs ice cream on top, I will be crafting a Chardonnay apple ice cream to serve with the apple pie.

I am grateful to Felicia Mcclinton both for her initial request to write a guest article and for her inspiring recipes that started this incredibly exciting chain of events to unfold. Thanks to Parducci Wine Cellars for the invitation to do something I love.

Parducci Wine Cellars and Tasting Room, 501 Parducci Road, Ukiah, CA

I will certainly be writing more about the event as we get closer, but I hope that if you are within driving distance you will mark your calendar and plan to join me at Parducci Wine Cellars’ Tasting Room, on March 6, between 5pm – 7pm, at 501 Parducci Road in Ukiah California (707) 463-5350. This is a tasting, not a dinner, so if you live in Santa Rosa and don’t get off work until 5pm, don’t worry, you can make it to Parducci’s tasting room before the event ends.

Thanks again Cindy. I know I have some friends that will be coming for this tweetup. Let’s meet next week so we can talk about pots, pans, utensils; whether you are stocked, or whether I should augment your supplies. While I love farmer’s markets, organic, and local produce generally, I will be using as many fresh and local ingredients as I am able, bought from locally owned businesses for my Parducci cooking. What I think tastes best is also the greenest choice which dovetails perfectly with the eco ethic of Parducci and Paul Dolan Vineyards. Cheers back at you! -John

So far, I’ve got a posse of three, possibly four very excited peeps, and I am looking forward to seeing my friend John again, enjoy some delicious food and wine, and meet some new friends! Very happy for John’s opportunity through this event.

Yes, I am aware that I was guest blog spammed; but the entry led to better recipes from me, an invitation from Parducci Wine Cellars to Guest Chef for an event, and a comment from you. All told, this might be the best spam I receive in 2010. Cheers!